The beginnings (2019 Feb... chat reading)
It all started in February 2019, when I was searching for onion links. I found a chat with good moderation, called Daniel's chat. I decided to give it a try. For my nickname, I chose Aera23. Aera23 stands for Aeracodec, a word I created several years prior when typing a fictional chat on iPad Notes. It loosely means "Aeron's code" and 223 was the default code.
From there, the nickname @Aera23 became used frequently, from chat nicknames to Minecraft account names. My websites even frequently mention Aera23!
The practicing (coding)
The discovery of w3schools enabled the creation of this website. Back in 2017, I started learning HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript. This allowed me to build simple websites, which typically had excess colour. Simple JavaScript tools were developed, including an 8-ball, a click counter with doubling, halving, adding and subtracting. There were several random number generators, mainly based on the current millisecond. I barely learnt PHP at that time since I couldn't edit the examples in w3schools. Plus, there were several warnings about security, which put me off PHP for a while. However, that changed with the discovery of Daniel's hosting, which was part of Daniel's website. His website had chat, hosting, file upload and redirects (which were later taken down due to misuse), and onion links!
In 2019, after discovering Daniel's hosting, I decided to test the PHP features. Soon after, I was able to create a story page in PHP, that randomly displayed 1 of 5 stories. Stories included an imaginary dream about bubbles, the talking code, and even a long, positive quote. The stories had different colours to them, and a comment section was soon developed.
I even created my own web editing tool, since I didn't like having to solve a CAPTCHA every time I wanted to edit my site. This editing tool meant I rarely needed to log in. Several features were added, like editing code inline, so I didn't need to select, copy and paste from the code viewing panel. There was the ability to enter a short code to log in, instead of having to type a long URL, which may or may not help with securing the writer page.
When I created a view PHP source page, I needed to protect the login code. I used obfuscation with string replace, and then CRC32 to protect the code. I didn't want to use the secure, but deliberately slow password hash function, since I wanted my website to conserve resources.
In March 2020, someone managed to delete the MySQL databases from Daniel's hosting. This meant logging in to edit from the hosting panel was not working, and the website's own editor, along with all the PHP pages had a 502. For a while, I didn't code in PHP, but I discovered that MAMP could use PHP. This enabled me to develop the website locally, which made accessing it tricky.
Eventually, I found a new hosting platform, Infinity Free in late 2021, which allowed me to finally host the website. The only downside is that Infinity Free injects JavaScript in a loading page, which meant that JavaScript (or a special cookie) was required to access the site. This mean that my site was less accessible on The Onion Router. Eventually, Tor was probably blocked outright from it, and it is mainly used as a live backup of the site.
Summary of selfhost
After a while, I used my own server to self host, beginning in mid February 2023 with a spare Dell machine from 2011. Initially using Windows, combined with The Uniform Server (I tried MAMP a few years prior too, this one doesn't need admin to install and run) it was also a few months before installing a linux distro alongside windows (Peppermint OS). Switching between either for hosting took a bit of time, mainly copying files tho. I settled on Linux only and haven't looked back since. Though hosting was tricky sometimes, and I had a few multi day bouts of downtime, from OS not booting (used Live OS), to SD card failure (moved to HDD, router failed at a similar time), removal of machine for a few days (got it back after repeated asking). The Live USB I use to run Linux came loose every now and then, moving the laptop out of the way resulted in it disconnecting 3x less often or so.
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